The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

This collection of Yankee essays by beloved American author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1857, a magazine that Holmes named.  Eventually published in book form, this second edition copy is about as American as apple pie with a side of New England cheddar.  Published in Boston in 1859, it still boasts its original, austere, American publishers' cloth binding typical of the mid-19th century.  The essays are "dramedy" vignettes about a fictional Boston boardinghouse and the breakfast conversations among residents therein.  The autocrat at the breakfast-table is part of the Smithsonian Libraries' Legacy collection that originally resided in the National Museum of American History.